But just like the 80s never really went out, DISCOVER’s daily news blog is only really getting a new haircut. One that’s less mullet-shaped.

From now on D-brief will be our new home for the best science and tech stories every day. Our name change reflects what we do—give you punchy briefings on the most important news of the day, and have a little fun while we’re at it. That’s DISCOVER’s style.

We’ve got the latest news there right now, so go check it out. Update your bookmarks and subscribe to the new D-brief news feed while you’re at it. We’ll see you on the flip side—and we’ll let MJ take us out.

Cicadas don’t use antibacterial wing sanitizer, so how do these insects keep their wings free of bacteria? Hint: it’s structural.

The wings of the Clanger cicada kill certain bacteria by ripping their cell membranes. A pattern of pillar-like nanostructures on the wings’ surface put pressure on the bacterial cell membrane, causing it to stretch and eventually tear. In a study published in Biophysical Journal in February, researchers modeled this process for the first time. They say this is the first example of a species being able to kill bacteria with a physical structure alone.

Replicating this physical structure in bio-inspired synthetic design could eventually lead to the production of antibacterial surfaces that kill bacteria on contact. Watch the video to see a magnified rendering of how the nano-pillars lead to a bacterial cell’s demise.

Optimal September navigation routes for ice-strengthened (red) and common open-water (blue) ships traveling between Rotterdam, The Netherlands and St. John’s, Newfoundland in present years (left) and in future (right). Image courtesy Laurence C. Smith and Scott R. Stephenson/PNAS

The extent of Arctic sea ice has been diminishing since the late 1970s due to climate change, and this decline is predicted to continue in the coming decades. The prospect of open water in these previously icy areas has sparked a lot of speculation about ships being able to navigate between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans through the Northwest Passage or over the North Pole.

Reconstruction of the vortex core and flow field from raw 3D data. The rendered data correspond to a three-fold distorted loop (a), a trefoil knot (b) and a pair of linked rings (slightly after the first reconnection event (c). Image courtesy of Dustin Kleckner and William T. M. Irvine/Nature Physics

When air flows around the wing of an airplane, it creates vortices of swirling air. When that wing accelerates suddenly, two vortices form and circle in opposite directions. Sometimes these circles link with one another to create knots. Knots occur in nature and physicists have theorized for the last hundred years that they could be created in liquid, too. Physicists have now figured out a way to create them and have 3-D footage of the results, which were published in Nature Physics on Sunday.

The researchers used a 3-D printer to make cross-sections of tiny airplane wings. Then they put the wings in a tank of water that was electrically charged to have lots of tiny bubbles. The bubbles show movement in the tank. When the wing was pulled through the water, it created knots in its wake which were recorded in 3-D with a high-speed laser scanner.

Forget 3-D and HD. This new kind of video isn’t almost as good as real life; it’s even better. The technique amplifies colors and movements that are invisible to the naked eye. The resulting view is not only enhanced but dynamic.

“What we’re doing here is a particular project at the intersection of vision and graphics that we call motion magnification,” said Michael T. Freeman, one of the project’s researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab.

Measuring imperceptible changes in color and motion has been around for some time, but this algorithm is the first to capture and visualize these subtle variations on video. The intended applications were medical—visually monitoring the pulse of newborn babies without having to touch them. When tested against conventional methods of taking the pulse (or an EKG in this case) the numbers matched up, according to a NYT blog.

Can rats read minds? Perhaps not usually, but researchers at Duke University have developed what they call a brain-to-brain interface, which transfers information directly from one rat’s brain to another. The interface allows the decisions of a rat on one continent to control the behaviors of a rat on another.

To accomplish this, researchers in North Carolina implanted tiny electrodes into the brain of a rat to record its activity, and then trained the rat to distinguish between a wide chute and a narrow one by whisker feel. The rat had to correctly match the sensation (wide or narrow) with a corresponding hole (left or right) by poking it with its nose. When the rat correctly matched the width and hole, which it did 96 percent of the time, the rat was rewarded with a drink of water. Researchers called this rat the encoder.

Acne is an unwelcome reality for 80 percent of us at some point in our lives, but researchers have discovered the secret to clear skin may be the kind of bacteria that’s taken up residence there.

According to findings published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology today, certain strains of Propionibacterium acnes, a bacteria typically found in our pores, may actually protect skin from other strains of P. acnes that cause inflammation in the form of pimples.

Most skin cancer is the result of exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which suppresses the skin’s immune system making people less able to fight off skin diseases such as cancer. But researchers in England have shown that a daily dose of omega-3 can partially counteract this effect, reducing an individual’s likelihood of developing skin cancer. The fatty acids have been shown to prevent cancer in mice, but this was the first time it was demonstrated in humans.

Next time you’re in the supermarket weighing the glossy conventional fruit against the small, blotched organic alternative, consider this: organic fruits’ stunted size may be the signal of their nutritional prowess.

Various studies in recent years have shown that some organic fruits and vegetables have nutritional advantages over conventionally-grown produce. For instance, organic tomatoes contain more vitamins, and organic tomato juice has more phenolics, a class of molecules that promote the body’s own antioxidant response.

But it’s been unclear exactly how organic farming brings about these changes in fruit. Now a new study indicates that the secret is stress: While conventional fruits are coddled by synthetic fertilizers, organic plants have fewer minerals available to them—and they therefore produce fruit that’s higher in human-healthy compounds.